Athlete Analyzer

We have asked Glen Viks, the head coach of the national U21 team in Estonia, what he thinks are the challenges of a small judo nation to be competitive and what benefits he has using Athlete Analyzer Judo for his team. This is part one in a series of user stories. Stay tuned for more stories to be shared.

Catching up with Glen Viks

I am responsible for the Estonian U-21 national team. Estonia is a small country and it is hard to find large number of good judo players on higher levels. Almost all the other good and best judo countries have one thing in common. There are lots of high level judokas to train with. To be the best you have train with the best. For this reason it’s most essential for us to train abroad. This of course is not always possible, due to insufficient funds, or sometimes school exams for cadets and juniors. So to do the work at home and still compete with the best, we need to use the high class systems designed and developed for judo.

We have been using AAJ for couple of years now and I mainly use two of AAJ´s features. First is the video analyzing section. At the start it took some time for athletes to use it in the right way. My main focus was to teach them that it is most important to describe situations where there is “no score”. It is important to understand that many of the graphs shown in the video analyzing section displays the athletes’ weaknesses. In my opinion, it’s much harder to train their best strengths to be even better. It’s much easier to train the weaknesses to be less weak and it also gives more effect on the performance on the tatami.

Secondly I use the feature that connects Polar account to AAJ. It gives the coach a good understanding what happens during the trainings. Other than the information of judoka’s tiredness, recovering, power etc, there is one interesting psychological effect that using this system has. The coach has the eyes on everything an athlete does. So when an athlete understands he or she is monitored they tend to train harder and are less likely to give up too easily.

Report your workouts in seconds!

Finally, after hard work based on valued feedback from our users we have now released new apps for iPhone and Android. The apps are remade completely and runs much faster than previous versions. The design matches the design on our webapp and we hope that you will love it!

Our focus has been to enable a smooth and fast register of workouts. It’s now possible to report workouts in seconds.

We have also implemented the “Flow” in the app which makes it very easy to like and comment posts from training and competitions. As a coach you can keep track and give feedback on everything your team does on a daily basis. This is very good to keep the motivation up for the athletes. Try it out, it will take your work to a new dimension!

Introducing Wellness reporting!

We have introduced wellness reporting together with the new apps. This feature is now available for all our Athlete Pro subscribers. The reporting covers five basic areas and takes a few seconds to report:

Motivation – How motivated are you to train?

Muscle soreness – Your current muscle soreness

Stress – Your current stress

Mood – Your current mood

Energy – Your current energy

AAJ calculates a Wellness index based on the answers above.

It’s very important to keep track of the wellness of your athletes and see how the training periods and competitions affects their wellness over time. The wellness should be reported by the athlete at the same time every day in order to be accurate. Early morning is often the best time to report. This can be easily set up in the app settings.

You can easily analyze the wellness via Analyze/Wellness both in the webapp or in the mobile apps.

Over the last few years we have witnessed a growing professionalization of Judo in its various strands, but most of the times we continue to find a model of “artisan coach”.

In the form of artisan education, the path of learning is based on the relationship between the teacher and the student and is essentially practical in nature.

This form of artisan education in judo comes from its origin, where a student accumulates the knowledge of the techniques of his master until one day the student becomes instructor.

Education through the trade should not be overlooked, but it is not enough for the growing complexity in society and judo in particular.

Among the various areas which today a deep knowledge is demanded, urges the technological one. Most probably in our sport this is the least developed area, but I have no doubt that it is one of the most important.

This is how Athlete Analyzer, a Swedish Judo software, comes as a fundamental tool for any coach, regardless of the level of your athlete. I must confess that I initially was a bit sceptic myself. I thought I would have too much work and would not have the answers I wanted, but I could not be more wrong.

I am not going to explain all the skills or technical characteristics of this program, those responsible for the program have all done well in their communication, I would just like to help spread the word in helping other coaches growth, because it will be my growth as well.

I only regret the fact that when I was an athlete I did not have this tool at my disposal, I’m sure the Judo would have been a lot more fun and I would have even been able to go a little further.

Big news today for all our users! We have released AAJ Flow for coaches and athletes. Flow makes it very easy for the coaches to keep track of their athletes’ daily updates regarding both training and competitions. The coaches can “like” and comment all posts from the athletes in order to give feedback and motivate their athletes even further. No extra work is needed, it just got a lot easier for the coaches to give feedback on daily basis to their athletes!

What is AAJ Flow?

Flow get its updates from registered data from the athletes’ daily updates in AAJ and create automatic posts in the Flow. The posts being displayed from start is:

Workouts (both native AAJ workouts and workouts from Polar)

Competition results

Match videos

Ippon sequences

The posts (and linked “likes” and comments) from an athlete can only be seen by the athlete and the athlete’s coaches. Coaches can see all posts from their athletes and also the other coaches’ “likes” and comments regarding these posts. This enhances the collaboration between the coaches for the benefit of every athlete.

Why AAJ Flow?

To give feedback to athletes on a regularly basis is most important to keep the motivation high for the athletes. Now it can be done in a very easy and fun way!

AAJ Flow also brings new possibilities for the teams together with the quite generous “Team Coach Package” which allows the teams to have up to eight coaches in the team. Most teams have former coaches with a very solid and high judo knowledge but they maybe are not so interested to hang around in the dojo anymore for different reasons. Now it’s possible for these excellent resources to use AAJ Flow and for instance give feedback on the athletes’ matches and techniques. The former coaches can help the athletes from wherever they are, whenever they want. By doing so they also transfer their knowledge to the team coaches.

What’s next in the Flow?

That’s up to you! We have a lot of ideas but we would love your feedback for the current version and suggestions for new functionality in the Flow!

We have got a lot of requests about the way attacks are registered in AAJ. We are now pleased to announce that we have listened to our users and released the requested change.

Earlier we only registered the number of attacks and that has been used to calculate scoring rate and attack rate.

With this new release you tag an attack exactly the way you tag a score. Register the technique, grip, direction and set “No score” as the outcome. This opens up for new analysis in the system – “Attack outcome” (Technique efficiency). It’s now possible to see how many of the throw attempts which leads to score. You’ll find the new graph under Analyze/Techniques.

It’s now possible to watch and analyze every sequence of a technique which don’t results in a score so it can be improved in the dojo. Maybe a technique is used very often at competition but rarely leads to a score? Maybe one technique is seldom used during competition but it actually has a very high efficiency and should be used more?

This now takes seconds to find out! The rest is up to you and your judoka to work on in the dojo. Evidence based coaching has never been easier!

This is a feature many of our customers have requested and we’re very happy to announce this new feature for our Athlete Pro users!

How does it work?

All workouts from Polar Flow will now automatically be added to your calendar as completed. If you already have scheduled workouts in your AAJ calendar then the Polar workouts will be tied to them automatically if they are within +- 1 hour.

The data coming from Polar does not include a RPE value for workout sessions. Therefore, we approximate an RPE for each workout coming from Polar in order to still be able to calculate Training Load for you. The approximated RPE is calculated from your age and average heart rate from the session. This means that you might need to adjust the RPE manually in some cases to get a correct Training Load. For example, heavy strength training might result in a RPE that is a bit too low due to a low average heart rate even though the session was perceived as hard.

Log in and check out our new Getting started page for coaches! The purpose of this page is to make it easier for coaches to start the journey with Athlete Analyzer Judo. See what you should do next and just click the link icon to get there!

We have also included links to the most recent posts on our blog and our social media. You will also find video tutorials of the most common tasks in the system. Everything you need to keep yourself updated about the world of Athlete Analyzer Judo.

A summary of the getting started page is also visible on the coach dashboard. It will disappear after a while when you have completed some of the tasks.

We hope that you will find Getting started useful and please get back to us with your much-valued feedback.

For athletes

Which of your grips leads to most ippons? Which of your techniques are most efficient? Which technique leads to many wazaris but not to ippons? These are some of the questions that you can get an answer to in seconds with Athlete Analyzer!

All graphs in the analyze section are clickable which will apply combined filters all the way down to the very lowest detail. In the example below we want to look at techniques that leads to most ippons. We apply a filter for the most effective grip for ippon scores and then we can easily watch each score. It’s of course possible to watch in full screen, in slow motion or even frame by frame.

Let’s say that you want to work on a technique that you use to score in contests but they seldom leads to ippon? Click on a technique with an low ippon rate and then you can compare each score done with that certain technique.

The possibilities are nearly endless. Do you just want to look at counter attacks? Would you like to study all your ashi waza? Which technique has the best ippon rate during match minute 3? It’s all there waiting for you. Accessible for you and your coaches in seconds.

You can use all this information for planning your future training sessions. You can even set goals for what you would like to achieve. Let’s say that you’re training hard to get more ippons from a certain technique. Just set the goal and when you achieve it you and all your coaches will get notified automatically.

For coaches

If you are responsible for many athletes it could be a hurdle to remember what’s working for each athlete and what’s not. It’s quite easy to mix up what’s working in randori sessions and what’s actually working in contests. With Athlete Analyzer you’ll always have all the facts at your fingertips.

Analyze and set goals is easy, takes little time and you can do it whenever you want, wherever your are. To be able to set goals is a very strong feature. Let’s say you’re a national coach, you can now set goals which will be seen by the athlete and his or hers club coaches. This enhances the collaboration between all coaches around an athlete, making it possible for everyone to work towards common goals.

As a judo coach you probably have many athletes wanting your precious feedback from various competitions. Sometimes you have seen the matches live which makes it quite easy (at least if you remember them from an often chaotic environment ;).

A larger problem arises when you haven’t seen the matches and need to watch them afterwards. First you have to get access to the match videos, often in various places and formats which could be a challenge in its own. Then you’ll need to sort out the match order as it may have affected the performance. Hopefully you’re now ready to start watching.

After watching the match videos it’s time to write feedback. It takes time as you have to refer to different matches and to different situations in them. When you’re done you can send the feedback to the athlete or sit down and talk about it. Great!

If you’re responsible for many athletes you will have go through this over and over again. As we all know it’s important to give the feedback shortly after the competition and it could be a problem as time flies due to the administrative work above.

Athlete Analyzer Judo keep track and notifies you of new reported competitions by your athletes. You can watch the match videos whenever you want, wherever you are. Write feedback directly to each video with automatic time stamps to each situation you want to comment. The feedback is viewable for all coaches around the athlete which is very practical. Sometimes the club coach write feedback, sometimes the regional or national coach do. Everyone collaborating for the benefit of the athlete.